


Humanity

by UberNerd



Category: WALL-E (2008)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-12
Updated: 2014-02-12
Packaged: 2018-07-25 23:57:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7552195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UberNerd/pseuds/UberNerd
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A very "young" Two. Though she has existed for 700 years, she's only been online for a grand total of 3. Emotions are hard.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Humanity

People expect a lot from you when you’re a robot. It’s true that I work tirelessly during the day, but I must recharge at night, just as a human must sleep. Leave me in direct sunlight for too long and I’ll collapse from critical overheating, not so different than a human’s heat-stroke. My hard drive stores three terabytes of memories and protocols in the form of electrical files, but is the brain so different with its chemicals and specialized lobes?

The humans have realized that we robots are becoming self-aware, and some have been striving to make sure that we achieve sentience. We’re given genders and names and special learning software that allows us to observe human emotion and know how to behave the same way.

The name that I chose for myself is Two, and I am of the female persuasion, only because my voice is feminine. I picked my name because it is my serial number, one of the only things unique to me. I am probe 2 out of 100 high-end robots made for the purpose of scanning, evaluating and tending vegetation. It’s a very important task on the slowly recovering Earth. Past generations of humans polluted this once lush planet, so my “sister” probes and I were built to assist the humans in tending and preserving plant life.

I’m currently occupied with tending a large crop farm, scanning over the plants every day to assure maximum health and growth. I don’t come into contact with humans much during the day, but I have known enough humans to understand that emotion is not going to come easily. I find many human concepts to be complex, paradoxical, and sometimes just plain impractical. My self-image, something very important to humans, is poor, for I only know that I’m streamlined in shape and roughly as tall and wide as a small adult human. I have four fingers on each hand and my optical units are blue.

Human relationships, which often seem to correlate with image, have led to many hours of unresolved problem solving for me, especially when I take into consideration all of the different levels and factors of relations. Acquaintance, sister, husband, daughter, friend… I can’t put them all in order. I’ve been told to avoid contemplating relationships until I understand emotion, which is madness on its own.

I’m only beginning to grasp the foundation of emotions. I know that they are greatly based on reactions to things perceived as “right” and “wrong.” For example, it is wrong that other robots are able to learn faster than I, so I feel “bad.” Within that, I might be “discouraged” or “embarrassed.” On the other hand, I am learning faster than less advanced models, so I am right, which makes me feel “good.” Inside of good there is “hopefulness” and “triumph.” All of these would seem easy enough to categorize, if only I did not feel them all at the same time. At the end of the day, all I can be certain of is “frustration.”

It overwhelms me. I frequently enjoy my work to escape the busy complications of life and spend my time scanning the crop fields.  
Working with plants is easy. It’s what I was built to do, and acting on the directive to inspect plant life is a welcome relief from learning emotions. “Relieved”… it’s a simple feeling. It’s decidedly good.

Rows of _Zea mays_ , corn, stretch out a distance that appears impossible for such small creatures as humans to have created. That is one thing that makes human traits so desirable: they can do whatever they decide they want to. I am a product of some human’s desire to make preserving vegetation more efficient, and because all I know is the way of humanity… I suppose the right way to react would be to “want” things for myself as well.

Right now, I want to observe plant life.

I reach out toward one tall stalk and take a rough leaf in my thin metal fingers. The artificial nerve endings register the cool, understated energy working through the organism’s veins. It’s different than the warmth of human life or the distinctive electricity of a fellow robot, but it’s familiar. I can quickly discern that this specimen is healthy and in the proper stage of development for being two months, one week, three days and ten hours past germination. I continue along the row, delighting in the simplicity of data collection and taking note of any signs of damage, pests, or parasites. I work quickly in the whispering breeze, faintly aware of the distant sound of children playing. The family that houses me and who owns the farmland I inspect have three younglings that act in ways I cannot understand, although I do know how the children are related to the parents. That’s the first relationship that made sense to me, and still the only one I can discern in public.

Young humans are the most complicated and uncoordinated beings I’ve ever encountered, not that I’ve actually interacted with one before. I’ve seen them from afar, and I have a limited knowledge of the game that they enjoy playing in this field of corn. Some of them will hide in the rows while one searches, though I can’t make sense of the behavior. There is no purpose. Then again, with humans, there doesn’t necessarily have to be.

A length of time passes and the children’s’ noisy chattering subsides to suppressed laughter coming through from any direction of the leafy green foliage. I don’t think much of the change; methodically working my way through row after row. Out of nowhere, something extraordinary happens. One of the odd young creatures tumbles from under the plant I’m inspecting and I unmistakably feel “surprised.” By the configuration of features on his face, I can tell he hadn’t been expecting to encounter me, either. We stare at each other for a moment before the dirt-splotched child wobbles to his feet.

I hover back a few inches. I don’t have any protocols concerning this sort of encounter. I think I’m “nervous.”

“Who are you?” he asks.

That’s easy. “Two.”

“You have the learning stuff, right?”

“The learning software?”

He nods.

“Yes.”

The boy scrutinizes me for an uncomfortably long pause. “My papa says that robots aren’t ‘sposed to feel. He says that your emotions aren’t really real ‘cause you were just made to be like that. So are your emotions real?”

This child has a very odd way of approaching robots. He didn’t even seem to think about what he said before he said it. I go through a few phases of thought before a realization comes to me.

“That’s a good question. I know my emotions are true because when you suggest otherwise, I feel worried. I also feel offended, so you shouldn’t ask others about this. I believe that I’m always learning, and I hope that we may one day share the same level of conscience. That’s what most robots feel,” I answer. That seems like a good answer.

The boy thinks for a minute and then smiles at me, and for one of the first times in my existence, I act on a decision that has nothing to do with protocol. I smile back.

What a peculiarly wonderful thing: a smile. Something clicks in my hard drive that changes the way my thoughts are processed. Maybe… it feels more possible now. I might be able to get the hang of these emotions after all.

I emit my first laugh as the dusty creature scrambles away from the sound of another child nearby.


End file.
